Once Upon a Time There Was a Traveller

by Kate Pullinger

  I stood up and clambered back on to the path. I hadn’t even reached the compound before I heard the shot.

  Pay Day – Dawn Nicholson

  I joined the Sea Cadets because they meet on Tuesdays and Tuesday is Mum’s big drinking night. When I say that, I don’t mean that she goes down the bingo and has a few pints while she and her mates have a laugh and lose all their money. It’s not like she stays home the rest of the week, baking cakes and washing our school uniforms. When I say ‘Tuesday is Mum’s big drinking night’, the important word in that sentence is ‘big’. Mum drinks every night. She drinks every day; all the time, in fact. Look in the cupboard under our sink and you’re more likely to find a bottle of vodka than a bottle of bleach. She drinks lager mostly, the strong stuff, brown cans that she buys in fours down the off-licence. Only four’s never enough. More often it’s eight, ten, sometimes twelve. After the first four, there’s no point talking to her. Two more and I know it’s best to get out of the way, get Charlie upstairs and stay up there with him.

  Once we’re upstairs and Charlie’s got his PlayStation on, there’s nothing for me to do except listen. Tuesday’s pay day, see? That’s when she gets her money, so that’s when she drinks most and when the worst of her mates appear. When I get in from school, I open the fridge to see if she’s been shopping. There’s a family pack of chicken goujons and twelve cans of special brew.

  I realised ages ago that my mum and alcohol are a pretty exact science. Four cans and she’s dancing around the kitchen, singing Madonna songs at the top of her lungs and burning the goujons. Eight cans and she could pass for an extra in Casualty – comatose and slumped against the wall, slurring or throwing up over the cushions. But twelve cans and she’s a different animal altogether – twelve cans and she’s pure evil.

  She’d had twelve the night she chased me up the stairs and tried to pull me down again by my hair. I can’t remember what I’d done wrong. I do remember trying to comb my hair the next day, the way it made my eyes water as I tried to pull the teeth through the matted strands where her nails had dug into me, flattening it down in the end and trying to make it look like I hadn’t combed it at all. You can’t see bruises on your head, but you can feel them. It was the week after that when I first went to Cadets. I took Charlie with me. He’s a bit young and he didn’t want to go. He would’ve much rather stayed at home on his PlayStation, but I told him I wasn’t going to be home on a Tuesday night from now on, and he switched it off and put his trainers on. ‘Where’re we going?’ he said.

  I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t like this. Even when I was at primary school she was the same, swaying at the school gates, swearing at the other mums, forgetting to come at all. She loves us. I know that. But somehow that doesn’t seem to make a difference. Sometimes she cries in the mornings, calls me into her room, sobbing as she hangs on to me.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she says, ‘you know I love you, don’t you?’ And I do. She’s always sorry afterwards. But that doesn’t mean I want to hang around here on a Tuesday night, and if I can stop Charlie getting pulled down the stairs by his hair once in a while then even joining the Sea Cadets is worth it.

  The first time we went, I didn’t know what to expect. There was this boy in my year, Matthew Sweeney, one of the really weird kids. I have to sit next to him in Maths because Mr Williams has a seating plan and you have to sit where he tells you. I didn’t used to talk to the kid at first; I didn’t want people thinking we were friends or anything. But then I thought, who are you kidding Jewitt, you’re not exactly tripping over mates yourself? So I started talking to him one day, and after a few weeks he told me that he went to Sea Cadets and asked if I’d like to go. I laughed. No, I didn’t want to go to fucking Sea Cadets. He shrugged like he wasn’t bothered either way and we started talking about Dr Who. Then after half term he mentioned this trip he’d been on, how they’d camped in a wood and done abseiling and canoeing and stuff. I started to think it didn’t sound that sad after all. ‘How old do you have to be?’ I asked him.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘You know, for Cadets.’

  ‘Oh right. Twelve.’

  I think about Charlie. He’s short for his age. ‘I’d have to bring my brother,’ I say. ‘He’s eleven, but he’ll be twelve in December.’

  ‘Bring him then,’ he said. ‘Get there for quarter to seven and I’ll take you to see the C.O.’

  So now on Tuesdays we do drill and knot tying, and learn how to buff our boots until they shine like mirrors. It finishes at nine and we make sure we’re always the last out, taking the long way home and dragging our feet so we don’t get in before ten. She’s usually passed out by then. We take our boots off in the hall and Charlie carries them upstairs while I go in the kitchen to see if there’s anything to eat. When there is, I carry it up on a tray and we eat it sitting on our beds, still in our uniforms. When there isn’t anything, I make us a cup of tea each and we drink it slowly, not bothering to say if we’re hungry.

  After a while, we get to like Cadets. The C.O. donates most of our uniform by asking the others to bring in old stuff that they’ve outgrown and stuffing it into my arms in a bin bag once everyone else has gone home. My jumper itches and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to wearing a beret. Charlie’s trousers are too long and they slide on the floor as he walks, but he doesn’t mind. Watching him on the parade ground, anyone would think he’d been born to march. He takes to it straight away, standing to attention, doing left and right turns, changing step seamlessly as soon as he hears the command. The C.O. says he’ll make drill sergeant one day. I think he likes the sureness of it – there’s no guess-work with drill. When the C.O. shouts attention we all know what he means. You stamp your feet together and then you stand still. Easy.

  I watch my brother marching, chin up, his trousers trailing behind him and mostly what I feel is relief. He’s happy, and at least here he’s not getting the shit kicked out of him by our mum. It makes my stomach hurt even to think that – our mum, who loves us. But she’s got her problems and, unlike Charlie, who still thinks she’ll sort herself out, I’ve stopped believing she’ll ever solve them.

  For a while I’m really pleased with myself, thinking how clever I am to have found a solution to the problem of Tuesday nights. But then I find out that as soon as you solve one problem, another one comes along to replace it, because it turns out that the C.O. and I aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed how good Charlie is at drill. We’re not the only ones to notice how good he is at sailing either. When Chief Petty Officer Rawlins tells everyone about a week-long sailing course at Easter, I look along the line in time to see my brother’s eyes light up. When Rawlins says it’ll cost ninety pounds, I see how Charlie looks at the floor, not listening any more because he knows he can’t go. Blood rushes to my face and I feel myself getting hot and angry. I think about the hole in the bottom of my shoe that’s started letting in water, and how impossible ninety pounds is, and my face burns. I write my brother’s name on the list on the noticeboard later, signing him up for the trip. Walking home, we talk about which puddings we’d put in our top ten and why school custard always has to have a skin on it even when it’s watery, carefully not mentioning the sailing course.

  I hand Mum the money and the bank card, holding my breath, forcing myself to look away as she stuffs them in her pocket without counting the money. The next day I’m scared to go home, sure she’ll have realised. To waste some extra time, I call in at the pizza place on the corner and ask the man there if he needs anyone to do deliveries. ‘You’re too young, mate,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘but we do need some leaflets delivered.’

  For the next five nights Charlie and I deliver leaflets to every house in every street within a mile. At the end of the week the man gives me a twenty-pound note and tells me to come back in a month. I scrunch the note up tight in my hand, running home and hiding it under my mattress before even Charlie sees it.

  I do two more lots of pizza le
aflets and take small amounts from Mum’s purse whenever she’s really wasted, so that somehow, over the next two months, I manage to get the money together for Charlie to go to Portsmouth, forging Mum’s signature on the form to say that he can go.

  When I wave him off at Cadets, the first day of the Easter holiday, I still haven’t told Mum he’s going. She was sleeping when we left but the fridge was full of cans, so I decide to stay out of the way. I go round to Matthew’s house and end up staying all day, helping him to fix an old bike his dad fished out of the canal. At tea time his mum comes into the garage and asks if I want to stay for dinner. I say I should probably get going, but I know we’ve no food in at home, so I let Matthew persuade me and when I see what it is, I’m glad I did: steak and onion pie with a big pile of mash, carrots and cabbage on the side with loads of gravy over it. It’s so good it goes straight into my top-ten dinners list. Matthew’s mum smiles at me as she spoons more mash on to my plate. ‘You can come again,’ she says.

  The rest of the week passes slowly. Mum’s in a bad mood because I didn’t tell her about Charlie going away, so I try to stay out of the house as much as I can. I deliver some leaflets for the man at the pizza place in exchange for a pepperoni pizza, but it’s boring without Charlie and it takes forever to do just a few streets. I go over to Matthew’s house a few times, but his mum’s at work and his dad doesn’t ask me to stay for tea.

  When Charlie gets home, he’s caught the sun and he’s full of how great the course was, how all the people were really cool and he wants to go in the navy, or maybe even the marines when he leaves school. I tell him not to say anything about it costing ninety quid. If Mum asks, I say, tell her Cadets paid for you.

  I keep the letter with me, unopened in my pocket. All day I can feel it, the thick cream envelope folded in half, hot against my chest. I wait until association after supper, hanging back, fussing with my blankets and pretending to make my bed.

  ‘You go,’ I say to Darren, ‘I’ll catch you up in a minute.’

  I wait until the landing goes quiet before taking the letter from my pocket. I rub the envelope between my fingers a moment, feeling the thickness of it, the quality of the paper. I open it where it’s already been torn open and take the letter out, smiling at the neat, familiar loops and curls of Charlie’s handwriting underneath the prison stamp. I sit back on the bed and start to read.

  I’m writing you this at the end of the proudest day of my life, he begins. Mum didn’t show, so no surprises there, but I did miss having my big brother here to see me pass out.

  I fold the letter in half, my eyes swimming. He did it then. I hold my palm to my eyes, snorting and fighting back tears until I’m calm enough to carry on reading. I open the letter again, reading it all the way through, twice, until I’m smiling so much it feels like my face might crack. I slot the letter back in the envelope, noticing the date at the top for the first time: the sixteenth of October. Tuesday.

  I get up and rinse my face under the cold tap and dry it quickly, hanging the towel back over the frame of my bed. Reaching under the mattress, I push the letter right to the back, as far as it will go. At the door, I take a deep breath, holding the air inside of me and then letting it out slowly as I put my prison face back on.

  I keep my head down as I make my way down the stairs and over to the pool table where Darren is watching two fat guys potting balls half-heartedly. He nods as I approach and I think about telling him my good news, but then decide to keep it to myself, to let myself enjoy it for a bit. We watch in silence as the men finish their game. As we watch, I think about that ninety pounds and how it seemed like such a lot at the time, and I don’t know why it comes into my head, but I think about that thing people say; I’ve never really thought about what it means before – you’ve got to speculate to accumulate. I think about the ninety pounds and walking around with wet feet for two months. Then I think about my brother Charlie, the Royal Marine, and I think, yeah. This now, this is my Pay Day.

  Documentary at Clareville Lodge – Susie Boyt

  – When I first saw Marigold she was clutching a bouquet of marigolds. Wearing an emerald gown, satin, with lilac beading at the neck and on the hem. No one dressed like that in England then. She was like a mirage. It was the complete package. Golden hair from Regent Street. Beautiful shoes, gloves always. You have to understand the impression she created. I was in Piccadilly coming out of the underground and she was going into the Café Royale. The way she moved! Stopped me in my tracks. There was mystery, there was sex appeal. People thought she must be from America.

  And then not long after Bob took me to a show and there she was again, only a smallish part, but she had one number and was wearing these striped cocktail pyjamas. There was a polka-dot pair later on and some with Chinese fringing that she wore with evening sandals. I think it was in the script. Recognised her straight away from Piccadilly. Don’t know how she did it, but she had the whole audience in her pocket.

  And afterwards I saw her come out of the stage door, with a beautiful young man on her arm, and she had on this breath-taking dress. It was black crepe – this was before America of course – and it was a Schiaparelli copy or Schiap-inspired anyway, bracelet-length sleeves with a big beating heart appliquéd on the bodice and arrows of love shooting out down the front. Can you imagine? This was when the other girls were all dimples and daisies. Her father was in the rag trade then, before that he’d had a bit of a career on the stage. Isn’t that right, Marigold?

  – Father worked in the sort of place where the chairman boomed, ‘Kindly herblige the haudience with an hencore.’

  – Whereas my parents thought the theatre was a cesspool of iniquity. Couldn’t stand it. They never once even —

  – Carefree, Gloria.

  – What darling?

  – Carefree – the name of the film with the heart dress. Dad modified the shape slightly over the hips.

  – Not that she had any hips to speak of. Yes, and he had seen, her father had seen, Ginger Rogers wearing the dress in the film with Fred Astaire playing her psychiatrist. And on the poster they put that they ‘Freudian slip and fall in love’. I think tap dancing formed part of the treatment.

  – Sometimes we padded me here and there.

  – That’s right.

  – You’re terribly good looking, aren’t you, dear? Isn’t he handsome, Gloria? Such distinguished features. When the woman telephoned to set this up… I thought you’d be a big florid man with a beard and a stammer.

  – Did you?

  – Seems so silly now. What on earth possessed me? I do apologise!

  – Not a problem! And so you two became friends straight away? How did you actually meet, the first time?

  – It was with friends of Bob’s at the Café de Paris – he knew the maître d’ slightly, got us a good table. And Marigold came and sat down with a friend of his. Bob’s agent was there too. The nicest man in London people used to call him and if you were one of his he’d greet you like a long lost friend, a terrific slap on the back, sometimes a bear hug, made you feel you were the one actor in London he really wanted to see, and as he gripped you he slowly manoeuvred you towards the door all the time telling you how happy he was to see you and how fine you looked and how excellent the prospects were for you – next week – and by the time you said good-bye he had practically pushed you down the stairs. Why am I telling you that, there is a point to this story there is a — Oh yes, I simply couldn’t believe that someone as beautiful as Marigold could also be so sincere. Usually with people, by which I mean with persons of both the female and the male, er, genre, it’s one or the other.

  – That is true.

  – I don’t know if I’ve quite communicated what it was like to be out with Marigold. Streams of men used to follow us down the street and women who wanted to look at her, really study her. When they were on the way to the factory or when they ought to have been collecting their little ones from school. The glamour that is today is simply
nothing compared to what she had. The hats had to be seen to be believed, a gondola with a little waterfall of lace with a fish motif woven into it to represent the lagoon. Just on a Tuesday! There was another like an artist’s palette, with splodges of paint made from rainbow paillettes and two crossed brushes sticking out with the dearest mink tips. A musical one that had a cascade of black velvet notes against ivory satin in a figure of eight. Stole it from the finale of Melody Girl.

  – Do we still have that somewhere? We used to have it.

  – Good question! When we were first in New York she got a Broadway show straight away, a small part, a thing called Johnny Two-by-Four – it was thirty dollars a week and our rent was twenty-three. She played the cigarette girl. We were living in a theatrical ladies’ hotel. Some of those ladies were no ladies if you see what I mean. We only ate when people took us out. Befeathered, bejewelled and befurred we were after dark. We were eighteen going on thirty-five. All the girls lent us their best things, and we did too as soon as we got anything good enough to loan.

  – And we were taken out a great deal, were we not?

  – Oh we were, we were.